Email may be a quick and easy way to communicate, but it has also become an avenue for pesky and unwanted messages. That's right, the dreaded spam. But what can you do about spam? Quite a bit.

Walks to the mailbox can often be marred by pulling out piles of unwanted
mail. Letters from credit card companies and other envelopes carrying offers
that can’t be refused seem to proliferate in the dark shadows of your mailbox.
Fortunately, your ire against such junk mail can be easily resolved as you rip
the letters to pieces or feed them to your paper shredder. Ah, the therapeutic
benefits.

But where are those benefits when it comes to the electronic world?
Everyday, you open your email inbox to discover a plethora of unwanted messages
offering everything under the sun, from Viagra to Antivirus software and
beyond. Unfortunately, the click of a button does little to relieve the
agitation of receiving such mass emailings. What adds to the frustration is
that we often receive the very same offer multiple times, filling up our
inboxes, confiscating memory space, occupying bandwidth time, and wasting our
time as we try—often vainly—to get the messages to stop.

So what can be done to stop the ever insidious spam?

What Is Spam?

There’s a difference between legitimate email and spam. At the core of the
difference is this: one you want to receive, the other you don’t. When fighting
the spam battle, this distinction is very important.

Chances are that some of the messages that clutter your inbox are messages
you opted to receive—even if you don’t remember saying that you wanted them.
Many legitimate businesses offer to send you promotions and updates when you
register on their web sites. Such messages should not be reported as spam—you did,
after all, ask for them to be sent to you. In such cases, legitimate businesses
will have an opt-out procedure that will terminate the messages. These messages
are also easily identified. The sender will be a familiar name, on that you
recognize.

It’s the messages that come from senders that you don’t recognize that are
the problem. These are the emails that you did not ask to receive; the ones
that you would like to get rid of, but cannot.

Unfortunately, spam is a reality of online life. With the growth of
technology and the spread of information, spamming is incredibly easy to
perpetrate. Your email address can be gleaned from any number of sources, and
can even be produced at random by some programs. No matter what you do, you
will receive some spam. But there are things you can do to cut back on the
amount that you are receiving.